Who would have expected, at this late date, to find a 1980s glam band with a feyish, Trent Reznor–influenced singer leading the action? Yet here it is, in 10 tracks (plus a live version of “Fucky Funky Music”) full of rave noise and vocal raunch (“Cubicle”), sexual demonics (“Pleasure and Pain,” “My Demons”), and catchy rhythmic hooks (“Fahr zur hölle”) that recall Giorgio Moroder and the Ramones, Italian disco and urban funk, the Velvet Underground and R. Kelly, Axl Rose (“Bitch”), and Sisters of Mercy (“Skin”). Recalled but not repeated: Rinocerose make their sources their own, with an intensity of voice, a clarity of tone, an orchestral magnificence, and a thematic virulence that are their own justification and summation. If others have done these bits before, none have done them all, or made them so ravishing. Rinocerose have been going since 1999, but in the US only dance-music adepts have paid any attention. Perhaps English-language rock isn’t yet finished after all. As it turns out, the band come from France (Montpellier, in the Midi), where rock and pop music still have oomph to spare.

FARC You’ve probably heard of two of the “indie” hip-hop artists below, even if they’re bypassing trad distribution models and just giving away their music.

Future rap “Sometimes I find it very hard to be me,” Saul Williams raps on The Rise and Inevitable Liberation of NiggyTardust! ’s first track, “Black History Month.”

Just like a woman The new, improved, clean, sober, and buff Trent Reznor is no longer wrestling with downward spirals.

Boston music news: March 21, 2008 When Trent Reznor made the new Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV available as a download earlier this month, all the hype was about the method of its release.

The long good-byes Some time in the late 90s, Trent Reznor holed himself up in a house near the ocean. Ostensibly, he was there to write some music. And while he did use that time to begin piecing together some of the songs that would become Nine Inch Nails's 1999 double-album The Fragile , Reznor.

Second chances When Rick Rubin went looking for Johnny Cash in 1993, he found a master songwriter and a living depository of American folk lore who’d been left behind by the changing tides of the industry and the times.